Not forgotten: 'The Other Side of the Tracks' tells the untold stories of those who died working on the US railway system

As the Transcontinental Railroad knit the East Coast to the West Coast, the stories of those who worked on and died for it often went untold.

The exhibition “The Other Side of the Tracks” at 516 Arts attempts to correct that omission through the works of nine artists. They explore themes and histories surrounding the construction of the U.S. railway system from the perspective of the exploited and overlooked people who built it.

Not forgotten: 'The Other Side of the Tracks' tells the untold stories of those who died working on the US railway system

Guest curated by Jorge Rojas, the exhibit was conceived with Salt Lake City’s Ogden Contemporary Arts and Denver’s RedLine Contemporary Art Center.

“In 2019, it was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the railroad,” Rojas said. “I felt like there’s never been an exhibit about the railroad that really looked at other parts of the history.”

Those aspects include the stories of the Chinese immigrants who built it and the Native Americans it displaced.

“I saw an amazing opportunity to curate an exhibit that would fill in the blanks,” he said.

Chinese American artist Zhi Lin’s version of “Chinaman’s Chance on Promontory Summit: Golden Spike Celebration, 12:30pm, May 10, 1869” represents his take on the original photograph by Andrew J. Russell, which ignored the efforts of the Chinese workmen.

Lin is a multimedia artist whose work examines patterns of violence, intolerance, injustice and complicity in public behavior.

Different sources estimate that from 1865 to the railroad’s completion in 1869, anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese workers were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, or 80% to 90% of the company’s workforce. More than 1,000 of them died.

Chinese workers were often assigned to dangerous tasks, such as placing explosives to clear a path through the Sierra Nevada. They also worked in extreme weather, including snow and avalanches.

Some of their bodies were left to rot; others were shoved into barrels marked “pickles,” Rojas said.

Albuquerque composer/performance artist Raven Chacon collaborated with experimental composer Guillermo Galindo to create “Caesura.”

The pair collected train trash — think old railroad spikes — and used them as instruments.

“It provides a very emotive, sonic composition,” Rojas said. “It’s very powerful.”

Albuquerque’s Caroline Liu created her painting “In The Shadow of The Mountain” referencing Chinese dragons and koi snaked by railroad tracks.

“She’s referencing ‘menshen’ — Chinese door guides for protection,” Rojas said.

Arizona’s Chip Thomas is a photographer, public artist and doctor who worked in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation for 36 years.

His inkjet print on silk “The bison didn’t cross the tracks; the tracks crossed the bison” shows a herd of the animals being shot at from a train. Killing the animals nearly to extinction was never an official government policy, but it was encouraged, Rojas said.

Denver’s Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a nationally and internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist, activist and “disruptor.” Deal paired two railroad ties into the form of a cross, casting his hands and feet in plaster to create the forms of a crucifix. Barbed wire formed a crown of thorns. Railroad spikes stab his hands and feet.

It is a visual representation of Manifest Destiny in the name of God.

“He’s looking at this justification of death and imprisonment all under this God-given expansion,” Rojas said.

“It’s not meant to be a corrective of history,” Rojas said of the exhibit, “but it is meant to inspire dialogue. I think it’s very important to reflect on this history.”